Bird Pillow

I've mentioned previously that I'm redecorating our room, using a red, black, and white theme.  I don't know what it is about those colors, and I know they're really popular these days, but I love how they all look together.  Between my tie pillow that I made and the cherry blossom painting, I've gotten started with the transformation, albeit slowly.

Last night, I experimented with another pillow.  I was inspired both by Janlynn-Sewmore's Wordy Bird pillow and by a pillow I'd seen at Walmart.

I knew I wanted to have a pillow with a bird, matching the color scheme I had chosen, and I loved the branches idea as well, but until I saw the Wordy Bird pillow and read the post, I wasn't really sure how to go about doing that.  I loved the simplicity of the whole project, and remembered that there are many ways to accomplish the same outcome.

I had originally bought some white and black patterned fabric for the main body of the pillow and some fun, flirty white fabric for the bird, branch, and leaves.  But once I adhered the white to the Heat n Bond (AMAZING stuff, by the way!) and cut the shapes out, I realized I didn't really like the design on top of the body of fabric.  I wanted subtle, but it was disappearing into it.  So I decided to go opposite of subtle.  I'd already made one mostly black pillow, but I decided to just go ahead with the second one.

I really wanted a bird on it, and I love the one on my header here on my blog that I took that and drew it out onto some cardstock to use as a template in cutting out the fabric.  I made up a pair of leaves, because I kinda figured the leaves in the header were a bit too complex for me for my very first time using Heat n bond, and wasn't sure how it would turn out, detail-wise.

After I ironed the design onto the pillow, I decided it was still lacking, so, inspired again by Janlynn's pillow, I cut a strip of the same fabric I'd used before to sew along the top and help add to it, and I cut out a flower from the fabric and Heat n Bond left over, and sewed a button into the center.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out!  And it goes nicely with the other pillows I have so far!!  The pillow with ties, as I showed before, and the other pillow is an envelope case I sewed to cover those really ugly pillows I'd bought before.

I really have GOT to come up with a better way to photograph my projects.  Because seriously, unmaking my bed to remove all the pattern from my comforters to show the pillows is kinda messy looking.


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Redecorating a Wall Hanging

A few years ago, my mother gave me this picture for my wall.  It didn't really match my house, but the flowers were pretty, so I hung it in our bedroom to fill the blank wall.  We've moved a couple of times since then, and I just kind of carried the picture around with me, never really getting around to hanging it again.

Finally, I looked at it one day, and realized that while I loved the flowers themselves, the basic picture had to go.  It was a little worse for the wear, having been somewhat beat up over time.

So in a fit of inspiration, I took it apart, painted the mats -- not as easy as it sounds, surprisingly -- and the frame, and painted a new image for inside the frame.  (My first real time painting something like that.  Fear not, the tulip picture is still safe and rolled up in my craft room closet.)

I focused a lot on the black, red and white theme of the decor that I'm planning for my bedroom, as you can see.  I just used regular acrylic paint.  I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out, particularly for a first-time.  And altogether, it cost me nothing to do, as I already had everything on hand.

A quick recap:

I posted:

And I shake my basket on the catwalk

The other day, I saw a sign posted on one of the many blogs I follow -- I can't recall exactly who posted about it -- and fell in love! The sign, originally made by The Handmade Home, was witty, cute, and so fitting for those of us who tend to avoid doing our laundry.



I HAD to have one for my own laundry room. My laundry room isn't nearly as big or gorgeous as hers -- quite the opposite, and really too awkward to get a decent picture of, but I'll try another time -- and I'm not brave enough to try framing mine yet, but I liked the basic idea.

So, I painted a board of plywood that I got at Michael's -- it wasn't very large -- and painted it green first, and then an antique white. I printed off a font that I really liked with the words, stenciled it onto my board, and painted. I wanted a soft look, so I used a toothpick to paint the words on. (Also, my small paintbrushes suck for detail work.) VERY TIME CONSUMING. Then I sanded the board a bit. It still lacked a little something, so I grabbed some mini clothespins I had, glued them on, and my floral wire, and twisted them into mini hangers. (Floral wire is VERY SHARP. Be careful, or you'll end up stabbing yourself in the thumb and bleeding everywhere like I did.) A little hot glue later, and voila!

It was about 1am when I took this picture, so it's a bit darker. If I brightened it up, it would have lost the details... I could take another picture in the light of day... but I'm lazy.




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What is now a whoops...

I took a brave step.  I bought a pair of throw pillows, sight unseen.  I figured, hey, I tend to like most of this company's designs, and the pillows are on clearance for $1.99!  How bad can they be???

Oooh.  Oooooooh... OH.  They're bad.  They're like little old lady who made them out of an old ugly shirt, left them in a back corner and they got dirty, and haven't been washed yet bad.  OOH they're bad.  At least I only spent $1.99 on them, and I can always use them as pillow forms and make pillow cases for them.  I already know what color scheme I want to go with, now I just need the fabric.

Boy, I wish they weren't so ugly.  Ah well.

Spring projects

I've been trying to come up with some projects that I can do with what I have.  I have so many odds and ends, and not a whole lot of room to store them, and not much money to buy new things, so I wanted to see what I could do.

I was reorganizing my bookshelves in my living room and found that I had a large empty spot when I was done, so I found an old candelabra that Mr Mojo had given to me a few years ago, and then I scrounged up some eggs that I had left over from other projects -- I don't have any primer spray paint, so they got left the way they were -- and some Spanish moss that I also had, and put the two together.  A little bit of hot glue to form the nest shapes around the eggs.  They aren't glued to the candelabra though.

And then, I still had a LOT of book pages left over from my pantry project, and lots of cardboard, so I cut out a wreath shape from the cardboard -- you don't need a foam wreath form after all! -- and using a lot of hot glue, I attached the pages to the shape.  Then using some spray paint, I gave it a bit more color, and then glued ribbon to the back.

Altogether, I had all of the parts I needed for the projects, so both ones cost me nothing.  Yay!




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DIY Book Clock

I was inspired today! So, despite Mr Mojo banning me from starting new projects until I finish all my old ones -- hey, most of them were just barely started anyway! -- I picked this up, and it only took me about an hour to do. (Mostly because I'm too stubborn to just go get a different apparatus with a longer stem.) Easy as pie!!

We happened to have a spare copy of Green Eggs and Ham laying around. I don't know why we've kept two copies all this time, but we did. And now one of them has been put to another use!

What you need:
- A kids book, not too thick, definitely hardcover
- An old clock, or clock parts – can be bought fairly inexpensively at a craft store
- A drill
- An Xacto knife
- About an hour

I had a clock that had been given to me, but that I had never used.  I took it apart for the purpose of painting, but found that I was rather more interested in just taking the clock mechanism and putting it somewhere else.  So I took that apart – fairly easy to do with several clocks, though some don’t come apart quite this easily.  I believe this one came from Target.  I also had my spare copy of Green Eggs and Ham available.


Using an old stir stick, I lined it up from corner to corner to help find the approximate middle.  You don’t have to use the middle, I suppose you could go off-center, if you wanted to.


I marked the spot where I wanted the clock to be with a marker, and drilled through the book.  (I’ve seen crafts like this where they removed a few pages first to wallpaper around the book.  If you wanted to do this, I would really recommend doing so before you drill a hole through the book.)  It took me a few drill bits to get the right size for the whole post to stick through the book.  It will all vary depending on your clock mechanism.  Trial and error is okay!


Because the book is thicker than the post on my clock, I stuck the post through the back and traced around the mechanism so that I could cut a hole out the back of the book for the mechanism to sit in, to push the post further up.


Then I cut out the hole using a box cutter.  (Yeah, that’s my left hand… it was a very awkward picture to take, because I am really not left handed, but taking a picture with my left was even harder.)


You may want to clean up the edges a bit, depending on how messy it got.  Lemme tell you, mine got really messy.  BUT, the mechanism fit!

 

Because I still needed a bit more space to get the post to fit through, I used my Xacto knife to cut some of the pages around the shape in the back.  I probably cut through most of the book, because I apparently have a very stumpy post.  However, if I didn’t do this, the hour hand would not have fit.


Then I used hot glue to keep the mechanism in place, as well as around the pages of the book to keep them from pulling apart.


I added the hands to the clock and drew the main four numbers, and dots for the rest of them.  (I know it’s not a perfect circle… but it’s for my kids’ room, so I don’t know that they’re necessarily going to care… I hope.)


Voila!  Book clock!  Add a battery, and you’re done!  (You may have to add something to the back for it to hang on the wall, or perhaps a way for it to stand on a bookshelf, but that’s really up to you.)

And last, but not least… a video to prove that it works!

I linked up to these parties:








Designer Garden VIP Party